Oedipus The King Literary Analysis
In the study of Greek plays, one tries to recreate for an experience, to recapture something of what is meant to those for whom it was written. We know more about the life of Sophocles than we know do about the lives of any other Greek playwright, but this still is not a lot. Sophocles’ work has been said to be the pinnacle of Greek tragedy. Oedipus the King is something like the literary Mona Lisa of ancient Greece. It presents a nightmare vision of a world turned upside down; a decent man, Oedipus, becomes the king of Thebes, whilst in the process unknowingly fulfilling a prophecy that he would kill his father and marry his mother. As scholars, we are bound to relate this story through history, to ask what the writer really meant, how
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Visiting Athens in 427, the Sicilian orator and philosopher, Gorgias, made a sensation by dealing with questions of causality and responsibility, which lay at the heart of Oedipus. A few years later, another orator by the name of Protagoras visited Athens. One of his sayings, “Of all things man is the measure, of the things that are, that they are, and the things that are not, that they are not,” expresses a human-centered, rationalistic speculation that is embodied by the hero in Oedipus. So besides its artistic merit, Oedipus is a major document in one of the most far-reaching intellectual revolutions in Western history. Sometimes called the Fifth-Century enlightenment, this period is marked by a shift from the mythical and symbolic thinking characteristics of archaic poets to a more conceptual and abstract mode of though. According to this new mode, the world operates through non-personal processes that follow predictable, scientific …show more content…
But, as mentioned previously, Sophocles was also an important man in Athenian government, his play demonstrating an overall obedience to the law. In Oedipus the King, for example, although Oedipus cannot escape his fate, nowhere is his rule of Thebes called into question. Oedipus, at first a stranger to Thebes, is accepted as king because he is deemed the noblest among them. “I became a citizen among you, citizens,” reveals that he has been chosen to be king, not out of some divine right, but through some democratic
Visiting Athens in 427, the Sicilian orator and philosopher, Gorgias, made a sensation by dealing with questions of causality and responsibility, which lay at the heart of Oedipus. A few years later, another orator by the name of Protagoras visited Athens. One of his sayings, “Of all things man is the measure, of the things that are, that they are, and the things that are not, that they are not,” expresses a human-centered, rationalistic speculation that is embodied by the hero in Oedipus. So besides its artistic merit, Oedipus is a major document in one of the most far-reaching intellectual revolutions in Western history. Sometimes called the Fifth-Century enlightenment, this period is marked by a shift from the mythical and symbolic thinking characteristics of archaic poets to a more conceptual and abstract mode of though. According to this new mode, the world operates through non-personal processes that follow predictable, scientific …show more content…
But, as mentioned previously, Sophocles was also an important man in Athenian government, his play demonstrating an overall obedience to the law. In Oedipus the King, for example, although Oedipus cannot escape his fate, nowhere is his rule of Thebes called into question. Oedipus, at first a stranger to Thebes, is accepted as king because he is deemed the noblest among them. “I became a citizen among you, citizens,” reveals that he has been chosen to be king, not out of some divine right, but through some democratic